The Backlash Against Iran's Role in Lebanon

This is the first installment of Lipstick Jihad, a regular column by Azadeh Moaveni, TIME's Tehran correspondent and author of Lipstick Jihad: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America and American in Iran.

TIME's Tehran correspondent examines what daily life is really like in Iran

One very early morning this week, the people in my neighborhood who
wanted fresh bread for breakfast congregated outside the local bakery,
wondering why the doors were locked and the stone oven cold. Fifteen
minutes later, when it became clear there would be no bread that day,
people began speculating why a bakery that has been open every weekday
for literally decades should mysteriously be shut. The small crowd
swiftly concluded the worst: the Iranian government had sent all the
country's flour to Lebanon.

By noon, when I was up and contemplating a
sandwich, word had spread around the neighborhood. Everyone blamed the
dearth of fresh bread on the government's over-generous aid to the
Shi`ites of Lebanon, displaced in the recent fighting between Israel
and Hizballah. I should point out that my neighborhood is split
between religious and secular families, and that the most pious of the
bread-deprived were just as quick to shake their heads with
resentment. No one said "let them eat cake," but it came pretty close.

Two days later, a gleaming new counter arrived outside the bakery. The
baker was remodeling, and as far as he knew, there had been no massive
delivery of grain to Lebanese Shi`ites. But as is so often the case in
such matters, the truth is almost less relevant than what becomes the
prevailing belief. That people so readily accepted that their
government would forsake their daily loaf for a distant Islamic cause
just speaks to the overwhelming bitterness these days in Tehran. Most
people are convinced the government is spending outrageous sums on the
Lebanese, and ever since the Iranian government declared a "victory"
for the militant group Hizballah, rumors of what the Lebanese are
'getting' have been flying. Free SUVs? Plasma televisions? Nothing
seems out of the question. Nightly news broadcasts that Iranians watch
on their illegal satellite dishes have shown Hizballah doling out
thick stacks of cash, courtesy of Iran. "Did you see the cash? They're
giving each family ten thousand dollars!" one of my relatives phoned
to tell me.

For the majority of Iranians who are barely scraping by, such news is
infuriating. In fact, unpopular government spending on a faraway Arab
community brings out a rather ugly Persian chauvinism. One story has
Mrs. Nasrallah, the wife of Hizballah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah,
receiving a gift of Iranian caviar, and thinking it some sort of jam.
There is no jam that looks like tiny eggs, I told the friend who
repeated the story to me. Her look told me I was being obtuse. The
fact is, the more President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his government
pander to public sentiment in the Arab world, which is ecstatic over
Hizballah's defiant stand against Israel, the more Iranians feel
neglected.

The government of former
President Mohammad Khatami was much more sensitive to Iranians'
feelings, in particular their ripe tendency to fume when state money
is spent outside Iran's borders. It underplayed the amount of cash
and aid Iran pumped into Afghanistan after the removal of the Taliban.
As a result, Iranians had no idea that for once, their government
played a noble role in rebuilding a war-ruined neighbor. But it also
saved them from resentment. Earlier this week, a front page headline
in an Iranian newspaper read: "In Arab countries, they call the
president Mahmoud." Iknow the president is popular in the Arab
world. My Arab friends grin like Cheshire cats when he appears on
Al-Jazeera, fire breathing his revulsion for the U.S. But would they
like him to appoint him as honorary head of the Arab League? I hardly
think so.

The main reason Iranians dislike the government's Islamic generosity
is because in general, they believe their leaders use Islam as a cloak
for their own economic greed. When police started confiscating illegal
satellite dishes earlier this month  ostensibly satellite is
banned for its impure Western content  in about two days the whole
city knew exactly why. The story went like this: the son of a
prominent regime-connected ayatullah had recently begun importing
small, laptop-size satellite dishes. If the government rounded up the
ungainly, rooftop dishes, and flooded the market with the discreet
little one, everyone would be forced to buy the ayatullah's son's
dishes. This connection between regime piety and corrupt wealth
dominates how Iranians see the world  the little events that
transpire in their daily lives, from bread shortages to satellite
raids.